Programmable Interrupt Controller

PIC A special-purpose integrated
circuit that functions as an overall manager in an
interrupt driven system. It accepts requests from the
peripheral equipment, determines which of the incoming
requests is of the highest priority, ascertains whether the
incoming request has a higher priority value than the level
currently being serviced, and issues an interrupt to the CPU
based on this determination.

PICs typically have eight interrupt lines, and two PICs are
often cascaded to provide 15 available interrupt lines.